The Missing Issue in the Romanian Security Policy: Discourses and Practices of Environmental Policy

Abstract

The paper proposes an analysis of Romania's security policy from the perspective of the relation between the different Romanian authorities in the specific field of environmental policy. The paper tries to offer an explanation for the reaction of the Romanian authorities to Ukraine's decision to dredge and deepen the Bystroye Canal, a naviga tion route through the Danube Delta, partially on the border between Romania and Ukraine, which connects the Danube and the Black Sea. The response of the Romanian state is considered a suboptimal consequence of the interaction between two different sets of logics: the tension between a conventional state-centred view on security and the imperatives of environmental protection, on the one hand, and the difficult cooperation between the Political and the Institutional Power on the other hand. The authors resort to two types of content analysis, a qualitative one of the defence and military strategies of Romania and a quantitative one of the Romanian public authorities' communication, based on results generated by the ZeList Monitor software. The paper thus highlights the extent to which the results of public policies are significantly influenced by the interaction of distinct views on politics and international relations.